St. Thomas More Society: a pro-life movement founded in 2004 by Mr. David Little. Our immediate goal is to end taxpayer funded abortion through prayer, work, and acts of conscience. We pray for life; we will not pay for death!

Divine Mercy and the Agony of Abortion
Listen to special audio from Dr. Peter Kreeft (Click here)

"At eight o'clock I was seized with such violent pains that I had to go to bed at once. I was convulsed with pain for three hours..... No medicine had any effect on me, and whatever I swallowed I threw up. At times, the pain caused me to lose consciousness. Jesus had me realize that in this way I took part in His Agony in the Garden, and that He himself allowed these sufferings in order to offer reparation to God for the souls murdered in the wombs of [their] mothers.(1276) St. Faustina- Divine Mercy Diary

"Faith grasps the substance of realities which transcend reason and the mind's grasp." From the Fifty Centuries by St. Maximus, Abbot and Confessor (580-662)

The above quotation is from the Breviary. When I came upon it in the Office of Readings for January 4th, I was overwhelmed by its majesty and insight. I have found it rich with hours of meditation.

When it comes to my work in the past 30 years, it is a meditation that is well worth the time.

Only faith appears to grasp the substance of the reality of abortion/murder and the measure of our Lord's Agony in the Garden. I suspect it may be the cause of His bloodsweat.

Our culture fails utterly to grasp the reality of this malevolent holocaust so inculcated in our western civilization. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of unborn children have been murdered in the womb just in the last 40 years. It makes all the deaths in wars or racial and religious genocides in the last 100 years look small in comparison! Reason fails and the mind cannot grasp this reality. How has this befallen humanity, especially Catholic humanity?

I'm afraid the truth is unpleasant. I have been a coward in defending our brothers and sisters in the womb. Others have as well. Particularly those today in positions of pro-life leadership, bishops, priests and laity. In 1982, I gave an interview with The Telegraph Journal, the daily newspaper distributed province wide in New Brunswick where I was born and raised and where I have lived all my life, save for the last year.

In that interview I spoke of my outrage of the government using our tax dollars to murder unborn children through Medicare in our hospitals in Canada. I said I'd rather go to jail than pay taxes to anyone who used my money for such an evil purpose. I said the same thing about the same time in a television interview with Canada's premiere weekly news hour, 'The Fifth Estate' on CBC, the publicly owned TV network in Canada.

I put some teeth into my words when I filed my tax return that year. I sent a letter and told them that I would only pay my taxes when public funded abortion stopped.

At the time of both these media events, I was Assistant Executive Director of the New Brunswick Right to Life Association (NBRTLA), a non-denominational pro-life group organized around the authority of a volunteer board of directors. I was quite naïve then about pro-lifers in general. When I learned that some of the board members were practicing non-abortifacient contraception, condoms, spermicide foams and other filthy unchaste means (which is how I felt), I began to realize that only the fullness of truth was worthy of my full time commitment. That meant for me, I somehow had to start a truly Catholic lay organization to champion the Church's teachings on life, chastity and the family. That awaking was the seed of The Catholic Foundation for Human Life, (CFHL)

But I digress. I was informed by registered mail that my salary was to be garnisheed by Revenue Canada, which is, for my brother and sister American readers, like the IRS in the US. My salary was immediately garnisheed by the treasurer, authorized by the president of the NBRTLA, without a board meeting or any consultation whatever. I was informed only when I opened my salary envelope. It was clear that those on the board had a crisis of conscience, and sadly chose compromise, or I would have been informed beforehand. I of course knew that the government would initiate this action. I was outraged at the compromise, at the sheer cowardice of these so-called pro-life advocates who were so easily intimidated by the "powers that be." I felt every one who really believed abortion was plain murder should stand up and be counted. It was a confirmation of something I did not want to believe.

Spiritual and moral cowardice is the cause of the abortion holocaust and why it rages on.

I will get back to that later.

I have had no respect whatever for the government of Canada (and little for those employed by them) since 1968 when abortion, contraception, homosexual activity and easier divorce were all included in a bill introduced in Parliament by (so-called Catholics) Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and his Minister of Justice John Turner. Trudeau announced this infamous 'omnibus bill' with an offhanded stupid quip, as he was wont to do. "Government has no business in the bedrooms of the nation," he said to a worshipful, deferential media.

I remember thinking, government would surely be in the bedroom of the nations if they realized it could well result in our national moral death if not actual annihilation.

Abortion/murder, euthanasia, HIV/Aids, adultery, teen pregnancy, co-habitation, divorce, same sex "marriage", pornography and more have all sky rocketed because of this kind of legislation everywhere in the western world.

"No man is an island", said Donne. "Do not send and ask for whom the bell tolls, for it tolls for thee." Individual souls acting against the laws of human nature, written in the heart of every man affect every man. This degenerative process begins with cowardice, the opposite of the virtue of COURAGE. All of the above evils listed and more have become pandemic because of this cowardice What is more? Stem-cell research on human embryos, human cloning, billions spent on pornography and gambling, rampant child abuse of even infants, child abductions and pedophilia, (Can you hear the devil hissing in some ears, "they murder them in the womb like the monkeys they are, so what is wrong at all with a delicious beating with a little young blood or broken bone or two?)

The devil is cunning, deceiving many who stray from grace, from God. We sleep through it all and don't care to know at all that ONE unrepented mortal sin, (deliberate and freely chosen grave evil thoughts, words or deeds against an educated conscience, i.e. full knowledge) is so profoundly evil as to condemn a human soul forever to everlasting Hell. Have doubts? The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) states it formally in paragraph 1857:

"For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: 'Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent.'"

And in paragraph1874, the CCC states:

"To choose deliberately - that is, both knowing it and willing it - something gravely contrary to the divine law and to the ultimate end of man is to commit a mortal sin. This destroys in us the charity without which eternal beatitude is impossible. Unrepented, it brings eternal death." That is, eternity in hell.

Where did all this evil begin and how did it spin so rapidly out of control in so short a time? It began where most demonic damage could be done. The Roman Catholic Church. Satan hates God with a pure hatred and all His creation, but he reserves special malevolence to practicing Catholics. Why? Because he hates all things holy and is wary of any potential holy ones. Yet, he can only do what God permits him to do. We must fear nothing but sin. His name was Lucifer, now it is Loserofall.

God is only perfectly present in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and its sister churches. Catholicism has the fullness of the truth. So through the sin of those within the Church, the evil one is often permitted to tempt those in His Church.

God is of course present in all human hearts through the natural law, and other Christian denominations, and Jewish, Islamic, and Buddhist faiths and to a degree in all the major religious affiliations. He is present as well in atheists and agnostics.

But God is perfect. That means no need to change. Ever. Jesus Christ was and is God. His resurrection was real. We celebrate this as the primary feast of all Christendom at this very time. Alleluia!

Christ started one Church. He did not make a mistake, for perfection allows none. His Church is impossible to prevail against. He chose one ultimate leader, Peter, a weak, impulsive, vacillating sort like most of us, to be the rock upon which He would found His Church. Peter shows all our potential. Jesus guaranteed without equivocation that His Church would never error in its teachings on vital matters, faith and morals: What is to be believed absolutely and what is always absolutely wrong. He did this by promising that the Holy Spirit, third Person of the Holy Trinity who proceeds from the love between the Father and the Son, would always perfectly guide every vital universal teaching on faith and morals. "Whatsoever you shall bind on earth will be bound in Heaven, whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven." It is simple enough. Read all about it in Matt. 16. Read my letter to the Minister of National Revenue of 2003 here for complete details of how it is utterly impossible for the Church to err in matters of faith and morals, simply because the fullness of perfect truth lies in inerrant, infallible teaching.

But other errors of grave human assistance to the devil have been rampant in Church history. We don't have to go back far at all.

You Catholics reading this, think of just two major trends in the last 40 years.

1.The denigration of the practice of the Sacrament of Confession.

2.The denigration in practice of devotion to the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist at Holy Mass and in the Tabernacle or Monstrance.

Both of these matters hinged around a major event in Church History 40 years ago. That event was the promulgation and publication throughout the world of the most important encyclical in the 20th Century, by Pope Paul VI called, Humanae Vitae1 in English, "Of Human Life".

It is addressed as follows:

"To the venerable Patriarchs, Archbishops, and other local ordinaries in peace and communion with the Apostolic See, to priests, the faithful and to all men of good will."

And its declaration which is merely an affirmation of 2000 years of constant teaching by the impossible-to-be-wrong Catholic Church, in matters of morals states this:

"The Church, nevertheless, in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life. (12)"

Thus interpreted to mean that in every and all circumstances each marital act must remain open to the possibility of conception taking place. Anything else is intrinsically evil. Professor Janet Smith, a Catholic of immense wisdom, has written substantively on this issue, which see here.

For the very best perspective on Episcopal rebellion on Humanae Vitae click here.

1. Avoiding, misusing, abandoning or abusing the Sacrament of Confession is death to the soul and a deep wound for every human being on the planet.

Compromise on principles of truth leads inevitably to moral cowardice. It is the result of such avoidance, misuse, abandonment or abuse of honest and sincere confession to God that shame and then cowardice are embraced. Contraception is intrinsically evil, a mortal sin. Repentance must be sincere in confession. Sincere sorrow and an internal resolute, sincere religious commitment to never sin again, with the help of God's grace, is the only way in which such sin can be validly absolved.

When Humanae Vitae was published, July 25, 1968 all Hell literally broke loose. Theologians, priests, individual bishops and worse, entire Conferences of Bishops in several countries issued statements leading to great confusion among priests, other bishops and, of course, the laity.

Priests in the confessional began granting absolution to couples using the pill and the IUD. Because of legal suits against the IUD, it is much less popular today in the western world, but is still used extensively in the developing countries. Both promote abortifacient results. The issue of when or when not to have children is the most important moral matter to all newly married couples. If they go to confession and are told that contraception is "no big deal, just follow your own conscience", we know something is out of whack! Polls announced in mainstream TV and newspapers tell of how large majorities of Catholics disagree with Church teaching on contraception, abortion, homosexuality etc. People are not stupid, they know that there is a breach in unity between official Rome teaching and local practice. So what do they do? They say to themselves something like this.

"Well now. This is the most important moral matter in my marriage. My priest says it's OK to use contraception or I can decide for myself. But I know that Rome teaches that it is wrong. Such confusion! What's the point in going to confession anymore? You can't be sure who is right or who is wrong. I'm just going to continue going to communion and to heck with confession."

Multiply such self-talk by hundreds of millions of Catholic husbands and wives and you will understand why the Sacrament of Penance is almost dead. Watch the droves that go to Communion on Sunday. Go the Confession on Saturday and see the few.

Sheep need a shepherd. That shepherd is the parish priest and the chief shepherd is the bishop. So it starts from the top. Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, Laity. The vast majority are in the flock, the laity. ALL ARE CALLED TO SAINTHOOD. None get to heaven save as saints, here or through purgatory. None.

2. Imagine this horror if you will. A married woman of fertile age goes to Confession and is told by her parish priest that since there are many opinions even among bishops whether contraception is wrong or right, she can decide for herself in her own conscience and he gives her absolution. She then goes to Holy Communion, and at the moment she receives the Body and Blood of Christ, she has an abortion caused by the abortifacient action of the pill. She does not know she has aborted a child. She later passes some small blood and tissue in the washroom and thinks little of it. She doesn't fully know. Something nags at her conscience, (the natural law written in our hearts), but she continues on in the same way. Her culpability is limited because her priest gave her absolution.

But Satan fully knows. Imagine the hellish glee of Satan and his demon angels! At the moment Christ is given in sacrifice as food for the soul, an innocent child is sacrificed to the devil! Horror of all horrors.

This confusion, doubt, self-deceit and cowardice is going on all over the Catholic world. 96% of Catholic fertile couples in the US practice contraception, according to the United States Catholic Conference. See here.

In the US and Canada, sterilization, tubal ligation and vasectomy are the favorite means of contraception by large numbers. We have become nations of eunuchs and sterile concubines. Birth rates are in the ditch. Catholicism and all Christian denominations grow primarily from immigrants.

Above I wrote: Spiritual and moral cowardice is the cause of the abortion holocaust and why it rages on. This cowardice comes from sin. Without the help of grace, men do not know how "to discern the often narrow path between the cowardice which gives in to evil, and the illusion of fighting evil which only makes things worse." I paraphrase John Paul II's Centesimus annus 25

Where is the source of this cowardice in priority of effect?

Bishops

Priests

Well formed laity, especially pro-lifers.

1. Bishops

Bishops show cowardice especially in highly controversial issues, like lust, contraception, sterilization, abortion, prohibitions of abortion-supporting politicians from receiving the Eucharist, and sexual issues of all kinds. Bishops must teach like Christ the fullness of His Truth as defined by His Church. They know the truth. Their position leads to respect from others, deserved or not. Many want respect first. Not controversy or the Cross. They avoid any stand, from bold and fearless defense of culturally sensitive topics to outright silence. Many are asleep in the Garden during His agony of our time. They become managers, CEO's instead of men of prayer in search of sanctity to worthily carry their great measure of accountability at final judgment.

A. "Often, indeed, incautious rulers, being afraid of losing human favor, fear to speak freely of what is right, and, in the words of the truth, do not exercise the zeal of shepherdscaring for the flock, but serve the role of mercenaries; for when the wolf appears, they flee and hide themselves in silence. Wherefore, the Lord reproves them through the prophet, saying: They are all dumb dogs, not able to bark."(Saint Gregory the Great, 'Pastoral Care', tr. Henry Davis, S.J., New York: Newman Press)

B. The first recognized Doctor of the Church was Saint Athanasius, the great bishop who is regarded as the great apostle defending the Truths and Traditions of Holy Mother Church against the suffocating heresy of Arianism. Born in Egypt around 297, he spent his youth studying the Scriptures and learning piety. The Bishop of Alexandria, Bishop Alexander took note early of Athanasius' gifts and guided him through his studies for the priesthood.

He was ordained a deacon at the age of 21. A year after a priest from Antioch by the name of Arius began spreading the heresy that Christ was not truly the Son of God, not of one nature or substance with the Heavenly Father and therefore not worthy of the divinity bestowed on Him and not part of the Trinity. This heresy was falsely based on combined teachings of Judaism, Sophism and Ecclecticism. Little did anyone realize at the time the great damage the Arian heresy would cause.

When the Council of Nicaea was called in 325, even though he was only still only a deacon, his Bishop chose Athanasius to accompany him as a periti. There he amazed and impressed the Council Fathers with his thorough knowledge of the Faith and his masterful apologetics approach of defending the Faith, especially against the Arian heresy. Though Arianism was soundly condemned at Nicaea, it did not go away. Rather it spread further and, were it not for men like Athanasius, who knows what further damage might have been done. It was Athanasius himself who illustrated the great damage done when he said, "The floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops." He was, of course, referring to those bishops - the vast majority - who had been lured away from the True Church in following the false teachings of Arius. If that many bishops were in hell, how many souls followed them down the wide path to perdition? Some say for every priest who loses his soul, 1000 souls are lost; for every bishop who loses his eternal soul, 10,000 souls are lost.

It was millions of faithful laity praying for the Church with a minority of holy Bishops who saved the Church.

It will be the same today.

Arianism has evolved culturally into the heresy of secular humanism and relativism while many folk hold still to the error that Christ is not God, but merely a man.

Dear Bishops please note: all progress is not forward. There is much more wisdom in Catholic Tradition than in our culture today.

Later the great St. John Chrysostom said the road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops. A bishop's road today is embellished as always with distracting trinkets of illusionary self-satisfactions. Power, pride, position, popularity, vainglory, ease and self-indulgence. Only seriously seeking sanctity soberly and watchfully will ensure your eternal safety, because the roaring lion of 1 Peter 5:8 is after the sheep, though first he goes after the shepherd.

2. Priests, Sisters, Brothers and Consecrated Souls

Priests have become cowards for much the same reason bishops have - human respect etc., save for one important difference or reason. If the bishop is a coward his obedient priest will often be called to an earlier confrontation if he truly seeks to be a saint. I have seen very good priests crumble from sanctity before confronting, even spiritually, the cowardice of their bishop. If they do not pray, fast and sacrifice much personally for their father and bishop, they will not have power to do more if deemed necessary. Their goodness will soon be depleted as all cowardice rots from within. Saints are spiritual warriors of prayer, fasting and personal sacrifice for the conversion of others, in imitation of the Master Who died for all of us, including the first bishops.

A.The priesthood, sisterhood, brotherhood and consecrated religious is where the real heavenly power lies. Numbers matter to us. Not to God. What are the numbers? In 1965 there were 3.3 billion people and 430,000 priests. In 2008 there were 6.7 billion people and 408,000 priests.

In the US in 1965 there were 1,575 ordinations to the priesthood, in 2002 there were 450, a decline of 350 percent. In 1965 there were 58,632 priests in America with 46 million Catholics. In 2008 there were 40,580 priests with 65 million Catholics. In 1965, the priest/Catholic ratio in the US was about 1:777. In 2008 the ratio is 1:1580. To have the same proportion of priests in the world today as America had in 1965, we would need 1.4 million priests.

In March 2003 there was published in St. Louis what is certainly the most important statistical survey of the Church in the United States since 1960: "Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II", by Kenneth C. Jones. It provides meticulously documented statistics on every aspect of Catholic life subject to statistical verification, and it is illustrated with graphs which depict in a dramatic visual manner the catastrophic collapse of Catholic life in the United States since the Council. With the publication of this book, no rational person could disagree with Father Louis Bouyer that, "Unless we are blind, we must even state bluntly that what we see looks less like the hoped-for regeneration of Catholicism than its accelerated decomposition." I could disagree. Sorry Fr. Bouyer, but have you ever heard of Gideon and the few? Or Judas Maccabeus. Or Moses. Jesus Christ said we would do greater things than He, and He now has about 2 billion followers. This is not about numbers of priests or laity. It is solely and entirely about HOLINESS.

Today priests have more power for good or ill in the sense that they have to preach more often, daily and weekly because of the huge decline in the priest/lay ratio since 1965. They also work longer hours and are often alone in one or more parishes. What is the answer? Always the same: holiness.

If one truly seeks it, according to all I have read in the lives of the saints, one receives it. Without exception. Ever. The secret is in Luke 11.

Read it, believe it absolutely. Give yourself over to total perseverant importunity. God will give you all the miraculous sanctity you ask. But never, ever give up asking every single day.NEVER. Once you begin to pray seriously daily, everything will change, everything! Real holiness draws thousands to Christ and one needs less sleep, food, leisure and other distractions from the Way....funny about that.....I mean these little big changes that take place when you have a mission as a saint given by God Himself! Just read the lives of St. Padre Pio or St. Jean Vianney or any Saint.

Hear St. Anthony Claret: "I have always known that the Lord was my fuel; but on this trip all the rest knew it too. They could see that I hardly ate or drank anything except a potato and a glass of water all day. I never ate meat, fish, or eggs, or drank wine. I was always happy and they never saw me tired, despite the fact that some days I preached as many as twelve sermons."

Marthe Robin, a holy French woman in line to be beatified, lived solely on the Eucharist for 50 years. See here.

St. Lidwina of Schiedam survived on it alone in the final years of her life.

I was constantly amazed to see Mother Teresa fully vigorous regardless of loss of sleep or jet lag. One of her senior sisters told me that it was because she was always with God. This little woman was a dynamo. Mother asked me to go with her to her heart specialist one day in Rome. The Pope ordered her to go to these visits regularly or she would never have gone. She wanted to talk to me about some plans we had together for the Lord. After the examination I had the chance to talk to the doctor alone while Mother dressed. "How is Mother, doctor?" I asked. "She has a very weak heart," he said, "but I cannot explain by science or medicine how she has such energy and vigor." He seemed to be asking me! I had no answer for science. I spent so much time with her that I knew it was her holiness that sparked all in that worn out little rickety old body of hers whose face always had a shy smile.

Mother often said, "Holiness is for everybody." Get Serious about Becoming a Saint. Twelve alone changed the whole world, 200 million people at the time of the Crucifixion. Now we have 31 times that many people on the planet. 30 times 12 is 360. Can we, you, be one of the 360? I can and I will with the help of God. What about you, reader?

If you're single, listen for the call of Christ; ask him to speak to you about the priesthood, or sisterhood or brotherhood. If you're a married man ask Him to make you a Saint, glorious in imitation of the greatest man, husband and father who ever lived, Joseph of Nazareth. If you are a wife, ask the greatest human being who ever lived, Mary Most Holy to make you a great Saint.

Don't be shy. Ask for the very best you really are. The image God had of you before time began. God does not make junk. You, yes you are the Saint He is calling. All virtue is a decision. Decide. And do it. The only advertisement in the world with any credibility I have ever heard or seen is that of Nike. Just do it.

Do not listen to naysayers or those who think you are overreaching. The only world changers are saints. So you are weak and a sinner. I am weaker. So you are a sinner, not as great a sinner as me. I was a personal friend of Blessed Agnesë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu and Karol Józef Wojtyła. I met them both in the same week in April of 1984.

Even with two saints as friends, I was a coward till the Jubilee Year of 2000 when I did what I knew God wanted me to do thirty years before. He wanted me to refuse to cooperate with my own government in filing income tax returns until the law was changed prohibiting tax-funded abortion. He wanted me to take a stand for Him. The way He took a stand for me and for you.

These persons, Mother Teresa and John Paul the Great called us all to be saints. Their job for God was to set the example all over the Catholic world and to preach and live the example of Christ.

The King of Kings and Lord of the Universe, said in John 14: 12,

"Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father."

Surely Priests, Sisters, Brothers and Consecrated souls can show the way now as ever.

3. Pro-Lifers

Laity in the pro-life movement are particularly vulnerable to cowardice since they have much more than themselves to consider as many are married with families. Yet all of us must come to grips with our level of faith. The question of courage in defense of our unborn brothers and sisters is simple. How far ought one go in defense of them? We should go as far as risking our lives for them as we would want for ourselves in the womb.

The CCC in paragraph 2273 says: "The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation:

"The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority. These human rights depend neither on single individuals nor on parents; nor do they represent a concession made by society and the state; they belong to human nature and are inherent in the person by virtue of the creative act from which the person took his origin. Among such fundamental rights one should mention in this regard every human being's right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death."

"The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law. When the state does not place its power at the service of the rights of each citizen, and in particular of the more vulnerable, the very foundations of a state based on law are undermined. . . . As a consequence of the respect and protection which must be ensured for the unborn child from the moment of conception, the law must provide appropriate penal sanctions for every deliberate violation of the child's rights." (Emphasis Mine)

There are many cowards in the pro-life movement. I know personally.

Almost all, with few exceptions have failed to show any support for what I am doing. A friend with the Lord has written this. It speaks volumes.

Abortion And Your Taxes - Fr. Al Lauer

Are You Praying for Life But Paying for Death?

IN GOOD CONSCIENCE

If Jesus were an American or Canadian citizen today, would He pay taxes? Could He pay taxes without contradicting His word? I have not paid federal income taxes for over twenty years because in good conscience I cannot do so. Yet it should be a privilege for me to pay taxes, because this can be a way of doing God's will. The Lord teaches us: "You must obey, then, not only to escape punishment but also for conscience' sake. You pay taxes for the same reason..." (Rm 13:5-6) However, repeatedly throughout history, man's laws have contradicted God's law. Then it is necessary to obey God rather than man (Acts 4:19, 5:29; see also Ex 1:17ff; 1 Mc 2:22; 2 Mc 6:18ff, 7:1ff; Dn 3:12, 6:11).

Many American Christians have come to the conclusion that we are in a similar situation. Some object because over half of our tax money goes to the military and arms. This can be seen as an injustice to the poor who are deprived of bare necessities while millions of tax dollars are spent for the proliferation of implements of destruction. Pope John Paul II said: "The destructive power of modern weapons requires nations to make the most radical rejection possible of them as a means to resolve conflicts."

FINANCING ABORTION

However, even if our consciences do not object to funding armaments, another moral challenge may be even more disturbing. Planned Parenthood, through promoting abortions, has killed far more people than the Third Reich did. It is the most efficient mass-murder machine ever devised and is funded by our federal tax dollars. It may not use our tax money to abort babies but our taxes buy and maintain the office, hire the personnel, and pay for the counseling that leads to the abortion. Even though an accountant can separate on the books the funding of abortions and the funding of abortion chambers, in reality they are one. What sense does it make to say: "I don't finance abortions. I just pay for the office, the personnel, and the counseling"? Of course, only a small percentage of our federal tax dollars go to Planned Parenthood but those small percentages add up to a multi-billion dollar funding. How can we go on praying for life and paying for death?

UNJUST LAWS

If any laws, including the tax laws, are unjust, we may have both the right and the obligation to disobey them. Pope John Paul II has taught: "To refuse to take part in committing an injustice is not only a moral duty; it is also a basic human right" (Gospel of Life, 74). "Abortion and euthanasia are thus crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize. There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection" (Gospel of Life, 73).

Are the federal and state and provincial laws unjust? This depends in part on what the tax money is being used for. For example, a law taxing us to fund the annihilation of black people would be an unjust law. Certainly, most uses of our tax monies are not immoral, but a small percentage of our taxes fund the chemical and surgical destruction of babies through abortion and abortifacient contraceptives. Through our taxes in the US we are even paying for partial birth abortions, which are even more obvious infanticides than are abortions.

DIRECT AND INDIRECT COOPERATION

We must disobey an unjust law if we would be directly cooperating with evil by obeying that law. Pope John Paul II has taught: "It is never licit to cooperate formally in evil. Such cooperation occurs when an action, either by its very nature or by the form it takes in a concrete situation, can be defined as a direct participation in an act against innocent human life or a sharing in the immoral intention of the person committing it" (Gospel of Life, 74). Obeying tax laws is permissible because paying our federal income taxes is not a direct cooperation with evil. However, the Lord may be calling us to disobey them and thereby refuse any, even indirect, participation in evil, for all the mass-murder machines throughout history have been fueled primarily by indirect cooperation.

WHAT ARE WE TO DO?

(1) Continue to pay city and state or provincial taxes where abortion is not funded. However, many states fund abortion; so check with your legislatures on this.

(2) File your return but refuse to pay federal income taxes, since you are opposed to funding Medicare funded abortion and Morgentaler's abortuaries and Planned Parenthood's abortion-machine through your tax dollars. Write a letter explaining your objection. If federal income taxes are automatically withdrawn from your salary, talk to your employer about your legal right to change that.

(3) Do not have cars, houses, bank accounts, and property in your name, because the IRS can take anything of significance for the payment of taxes. This means you give up all legal rights to these possessions.

(4) Pray for the strength to obey God rather than man. Accept Jesus as Lord. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you. Then do what Jesus would do.

Nihil obstat: Reverend Giles H. Pater, May 27, 2004.

Imprimatur: † Most Reverend Carl K. Moeddel, Vicar General and Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, June 7, 2004.

The Nihil obstat and Imprimatur are a declaration that a book or pamphlet is considered to be free from doctrinal or moral error. It is not implied that those who have granted the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions, or statements expressed.

Is there one best answer to this holocaust of gravest evil?

So what is that answer? The answer is pray, pray, pray, regularly everyday, for the courage to choose, to really want to be a SAINT!